Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
Luke, if he be the writer of the Acts, goes on with his analysis. He
has done with the first fold, the outer garment, as it were; he strips
it off and shows us the next fold, 'full of the Holy Ghost.'
A divine Helper, not merely a divine influence, but a divine Person,
who not only helps men from without, but so enters into a man as that
the man's whole nature is saturated with Him--that is strange language.
Mystical and unreal I dare say some of you may think it, but let us
consider whether some such divine Helper is not plainly pointed as
necessary, by the experience of every man that ever honestly tried to
make himself good.
I have no doubt that I am speaking to many persons who, more or less
constantly and courageously and earnestly, have laboured at the task of
self-improvement and self-culture. I venture to think that, if their
standard of what they wish to attain is high, their confession of what
they have attained will be very low. Ah, brother! if we think of what
it is that we need to make us good--viz. the strengthening of these
weak wills of ours, which we cannot strengthen but to a very limited
degree by any tonics that we can apply, or any supports with which we
may bind them round; if we consider the resistance which ourselves, our
passions, our tastes, our habits, our occupations offer, and the
resistance which the world around us, friends, companions, and all the
aggregate, dread and formidable, of material things present to our
becoming, in any lofty and comprehensive sense of the term, good men
and women, I think we shall be ready to listen, as to a true Gospel, to
the message that says, 'You do not need to do it by yourself.' You have
got the wolf by the ears, perhaps, for a moment, but there is
tremendous strength in the brute, and your hands and wrists will ache
in holding him presently, and what will happen then? You do not need to
try it yourself. There is a divine Helper standing at your sides and
waiting to strengthen you, and that Helper does not work from outside;
He will pass within, and dwell in your hearts and mould and strengthen
your wills to what is good, and suppress your inclinations to evil,
and, by His inward presence, teach 'your hands to war and your fingers
to fight.'
Surely, surely, the experience of the world from the beginning,
confirmed by the consciousness and conscience of every one of us, tells
us that of ourselves we are impotent, and that the good that is within
the reach of our unaided efforts is poor and fragmentary and
superficial indeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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